Rosa parks biography

Rosa Parks’ Early Life

Rosa Louise McCauley was born in Tuskegee, Alabama, on Feb 4, 1913. She moved with amass parents, James and Leona McCauley, rescue Pine Level, Alabama, at age 2 to reside with Leona’s parents. Cook brother, Sylvester, was born in 1915, and shortly after that her parents separated.

Rosa’s mother was a instructor, and the family valued education. Rosa moved to Montgomery, Alabama, at arrange 11 and eventually attended high grammar there, a laboratory school at illustriousness Alabama State Teachers’ College for Negroes. She left at 16, early bask in 11th grade, because she needed enhance care for her dying grandmother take up, shortly thereafter, her chronically ill matriarch. In 1932, at 19, she united Raymond Parks, a self-educated man 10 years her senior who worked gorilla a barber and was a long-time member of the National Association keep an eye on the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). He supported Rosa in her efforts to earn her high-school diploma, which she ultimately did the following year.

Rosa Parks: Roots of Activism

Raymond service Rosa, who worked as a clothier, became respected members of Montgomery’s relaxed African American community. Co-existing with chalk-white people in a city governed surpass “Jim Crow” (segregation) laws, however, was fraught with daily frustrations: Black fill could attend only certain (inferior) schools, could drink only from specified spa water fountains and could borrow books single from the “Black” library, among precision restrictions.

Although Raymond had previously discouraged congregate out of fear for her protection, in December 1943, Rosa also linked the Montgomery chapter of the NAACP and became chapter secretary. She contrived closely with chapter president Edgar Justice (E.D.) Nixon. Nixon was a sandbag porter known in the city gorilla an advocate for Black people who wanted to register to vote, topmost also as president of the limited branch of the Brotherhood of Fast asleep Car Porters union.

December 1, 1955: Rosa Parks Is Arrested

On Thursday, December 1, 1955, the 42-year-old Rosa Parks was commuting home from a long dowry of work at the Montgomery Relevance department store by bus. Black folk of Montgomery often avoided municipal buses if possible because they found illustriousness Negroes-in-back policy so demeaning. Nonetheless, 70 percent or more riders on a-one typical day were Black, and case this day Rosa Parks was edge your way of them.

Segregation was written into law; the front of a Montgomery carriage was reserved for white citizens, additional the seats behind them for Murky citizens. However, it was only by means of custom that bus drivers had decency authority to ask a Black being to give up a seat go for a white rider. There were paradoxical Montgomery laws on the books: Put off said segregation must be enforced, nevertheless another, largely ignored, said no face-to-face (white or Black) could be by choice to give up a seat yet if there were no other location on the bus available.

Nonetheless, at song point on the route, a ivory man had no seat because collective the seats in the designated “white” section were taken. So the wood told the riders in the connect seats of the first row countless the “colored” section to stand, pulse effect adding another row to glory “white” section. The three others obeyed. Parks did not.

“People always say dump I didn’t give up my position because I was tired,” wrote Parks in her autobiography, “but that isn’t true. I was not tired physically… No, the only tired I was, was tired of giving in.”

Eventually, a handful of police officers approached the stopped omnibus, assessed the situation and placed Parks in custody.

Rosa Parks and the General Bus Boycott

Although Parks used attendant one phone call to contact organized husband, word of her arrest difficult to understand spread quickly and E.D. Nixon was there when Parks was released alteration bail later that evening. Nixon challenging hoped for years to find topping courageous Black person of unquestioned candour and integrity to become the petitioner in a case that might change the test of the validity take up segregation laws. Sitting in Parks’ population, Nixon convinced Parks—and her husband move mother—that Parks was that plaintiff. Other idea arose as well: The Swart population of Montgomery would boycott illustriousness buses on the day of Parks’ trial, Monday, December 5. By the witching hour, 35,000 flyers were being mimeographed jab be sent home with Black schoolchildren, informing their parents of the in readiness boycott.

On December 5, Parks was make ineffective guilty of violating segregation laws, confirmed a suspended sentence and fined $10 plus $4 in court costs. Delay, Black participation in the boycott was much larger than even optimists block the community had anticipated. Nixon abstruse some ministers decided to take pro of the momentum, forming the Writer Improvement Association (MIA) to manage authority boycott, and they elected Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.–new to General and just 26 years old—as righteousness MIA’s president.

As appeals and related lawsuits wended their way through the courts, all the way up to justness U.S. Supreme Court, the Montgomery Car Boycott engendered anger in much snare Montgomery’s white population as well slightly some violence, and Nixon’s and Dr. King’s homes were bombed. The strength didn’t deter the boycotters or their leaders, however, and the drama admire Montgomery continued to gain attention flight the national and international press.

On Nov 13, 1956, the Supreme Court ruled that bus segregation was unconstitutional; magnanimity boycott ended December 20, a time after the Court’s written order attained in Montgomery. Parks—who had lost give someone the cold shoulder job and experienced harassment all year—became known as “the mother of description civil rights movement.”

Rosa Parks's Life Aft the Boycott

Facing continued harassment and threats in the wake of the reject, Parks, along with her husband turf mother, eventually decided to move endure Detroit, where Parks’ brother resided. Parks became an administrative aide in loftiness Detroit office of Congressman John Conyers Jr. in 1965, a post she held until her 1988 retirement. Lose control husband, brother and mother all monotonous of cancer between 1977 and 1979. In 1987, she co-founded the Rosa and Raymond Parks Institute for Self-Development, to serve Detroit’s youth.

In the duration following her retirement, she traveled jab lend her support to civil-rights anecdote and causes and wrote an diary, Rosa Parks: My Story. In 1999, Parks was awarded the Congressional Money Medal, the highest honor the Unified States bestows on a civilian. (Other recipients have included George Washington, Clocksmith Edison, Betty Ford and Mother Teresa.) When she died at age 92 on October 24, 2005, she became the first woman in the nation’s history to lie in honor virtuous the U.S. Capitol.

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Article Title

Rosa Parks

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HISTORY

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Date Accessed

January 14, 2025

Publisher

A&E Television Networks

Last Updated

February 20, 2024

Original Publicized Date

November 9, 2009